Missing the Cold

I never thought I would get homesick for the cold, but I am during this blistering time in Metro Manila where announcements of power outages make you grind your teeth and cause cancellations of any plans for the day.

I just reviewed the photos my children took of our East Coast sortie in the fall of 2009 right before the heavy blizzards and snowstorms came in, and I thought what I’d give for a hint of a breeze or the swish of wind that comes from what they call the canyon effect when you’re standing on a street corner surrounded by skyscrapers and this wind from nowhere lashes at you and sends you scurrying indoors.

Ella Fitzgerald has a beautiful song “Autumn in New York” extolling the colors of fall and the canyons of steel. I love it. I played it in my imaginary soundtrack as my daughter Kimi and I wandered in Central Park as we stepped out of the Guggenheim Museum one noon after viewing the Kandinsky retrospective. We walked alongside the rails of the Jacqueline K. Onassis reservoir and watched squirrels running up and down trees. I never got to Bow Bridge which is immortalized in several movies as my legs began to get numb. At some point, we walked to the nearest bus stop, got into one that brought us to the New York Public Library where I found reassuring warmth again.

My young friend Lyra Garcellano, who’s on an Asian Artists Council grant in NYC, dislikes the slush of winter (no hint of spring as of yesterday, she said as we chatted online), but she’ll take winter cold anytime, too, after I described how tormenting this drought-aggravated, early Philippine summer is.

Here Kimi the photographer and Ida catch me buttoning up in a heavy-duty jacket at the Rockefeller Plaza.